


Sacrifice

by VeloxVoid



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: Action, Descriptions of Magic Use, Drama, Gen, Healing, Healing Magic, Magic, Magic-Users, Superpowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 16:02:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28513098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeloxVoid/pseuds/VeloxVoid
Summary: When fleeing the Begnion forces, Micaiah can sense something is wrong. Despite the danger it puts her in, she knows she must turn back — must return to Nevassa to heal the boy whose life is on the line.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 6
Collections: Live To Serve Zine





	Sacrifice

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written as part of "Live to Serve" — a healing-themed Fire Emblem zine! If you'd like to check it out, you can do so: [here!](https://twitter.com/Live2ServeZine)
> 
> I'm [VeloxVoid](https://twitter.com/VeloxVoid) on Twitter if you'd like to follow me for more. I'm currently taking a break for my mental health but I should be back fairly soon :)
> 
> \---
> 
> My dear friend [BowAndYarrows](https://twitter.com/BowAndYarrows) made a truly beautiful piece of art to accompany this story, and I cannot be more honoured and happy to have worked together with them on this! <3

Micaiah ran.

She had run so much lately. Each day seemed to bring cause for it — seemed to result in her muscles working powerfully, running. Towards enemies, towards allies in need of help, or away from those chasing her — away from the terrors behind her that wanted her dead for some reason or another.

Today was no exception. Now, Micaiah ran from the Begnion forces. Her lungs seared and her legs ached as she flew through the streets of Nevassa, hot on the heels of the rest of her ragged little party. Their shoes echoed through the alleyway, ricocheting off of the cobblestone pavement and shabby wooden buildings all around her, yet still scarcely audible over the sound of her own hoarse breathing in her ears.

_Get away._ They were the only words reeling through her mind as storefronts passed her by, as crates seemed to materialise out of nowhere to trip her up. She remained light on her feet, deft, and dodged each oncoming obstacle. She needed to flee — to be safe. She could not risk being caught, or putting the Dawn Brigade in danger. They had jeopardised themselves enough already, and the idea of the soldiers reaching them, of an armoured hand darting out to grasp her wrist, pulling her back—

Fear rose inside of her, threatening to choke her. _No!_ She couldn’t let that happen. Yet this feeling that rose inside her, as insidious as bile rising in the throats of the poisoned, was not merely fear. Micaiah was not this primally frightened of the Begnion soldiers: they did not terrify her to this extent. She wanted to flee them, but she would not be afraid to fight them. So, what was this feeling?

This sensation was something else — a panic bubbling up from elsewhere. This was a _warning_ that Micaiah was sensing, telling her that something was wrong. Something, somewhere, was terribly, awfully, catastrophically _wrong._

And she needed to stop it.

“Wait!” she shouted at once, her cry as sharp as the ringing of clashing steel. She stopped in her tracks, hearing feet scramble to a halt behind her, and turned. She saw Sothe, concern lighting his once-so-stoic face. “Something terrible is about to happen!”

“What is it?” Sothe asked, breathless.

_What is it?_

… What _was_ it?

She didn’t know. Micaiah closed her eyes, blackness engulfing her vision, and she searched. Deep down within her, tingling through her nerves and festering in the pit of her stomach, she felt pain. She felt fear, and loneliness, and a threat looming over her so sinister, like a predator with jaws agape, preparing to snatch her up. It made her feel ill: sickened to the core. Each of her muscles quaked, stomach churning, head spinning, and she searched frantically through the darkness for the source.

She didn’t know what was happening, but it was something. Something innate — something deep in the fibres of her being, primal — told her of its danger. Somebody would be hurt, gravely. The life would leech from them into the ground below, and Tellius would reach out to embrace them, to welcome their body back into the ground from whence each of its inhabitants had once come.

Somebody was going to die.

_“No!_ ” she breathed, her eyes snapping open and reality flooding back to her. “We have to go back.”

Almost instinctively, her feet took off running again. She did not even look back at Sothe as she ran past him, scarcely registering the sounds of his footfalls behind her. All that mattered to her now was reaching them; who it was, she didn’t know, but she needed desperately to help them before it was too late.

The journey back felt so much longer, but Micaiah did not relent. Her lungs begged for her to stop, to catch some air, but she weaved her way back through the alleyways of Nevassa without a moment’s hesitation—

It was then that Micaiah gasped, a pain shooting through her back, seeming to hit her spine and blossom throughout her as ink would spread across clean parchment. It stalled her, made her seethe; the damage had been done — someone had been hurt. Their death had begun, their time left on Tellius ebbing away by the second. It only hardened her resolve.

She hastened her pace; the wind whipped through her hair and rushed past her ears, and her eyes widened as she spotted the clearing before her: the gap between the buildings that the Dawn Brigade had made their escape through mere moments before.

The sky above was dull, and the grey-brown brickwork all around made the world seem almost hazy. When Micaiah laid eyes upon the scene, however — upon the figures of bodies crowding the square, some of them poised as if to bolt away — she saw light. It was as if the sun was pouring its rays down on the townsfolk, illuminating the centre of the marketplace. _Yes,_ her body told her as she slowed, finally seeing what awaited her. _You’ve found it._

In the very centre of the marketplace Micaiah walked through now, a young boy lay. His body was crumpled — contorted — and his back, clad in a flimsy blue shirt, had been pierced with an arrow that still sat nestled into his skin. His small, underfed form and chestnut brown hair were recognisable at once.

_Nico._

The troops of Begnion were there, their armour the same deathly crimson as the blood that poured from Nico’s wound, drenching his shirt and the stones he lay upon. Yet Micaiah didn’t care. She wasn’t afraid any longer — did not sense the need to flee. She sensed no more terror, nor unease.

“...blame it on the Dawn Brigade!” she heard a commander’s gruff voice shout. “They made this happen!”

Micaiah was focussed on only one thing, though. The crowd parted for her and began to whisper, and she crossed easily over to the dying, bleeding child. She did not go unnoticed: the commander standing before them was shouting, barking orders, but Micaiah couldn’t hear him. She felt nothing except a potent, all-pervading sense of purpose as she crossed the cobblestones, leading herself to Nico’s crumpled form and kneeling before him. She knew what she had to do.

Her hand came out without her intention, and her fingertips lightly brushed his back. To her relief, he still felt warm, and she let her eyes drift shut once again, calling from deep inside her that primordial power she knew lay within. It was dormant no longer as she called upon it, feeling it rush through her blood up into her mind, pulsating wildly. Around it swam, swirling with a harsh blue light that threatened to blind her even beneath closed eyelids. But she took a hold of it, calmed it, hushed it until it would obey. And she sent it hurtling back through her veins, down into her hand, where it flooded from her fingertips and into Nico’s body.

It seemed to sap at her lifeforce; the more that erupted from her hand, the weaker she felt. It was as if blood poured from a wound of her own, more and more of her vigour cascading out of her by the second.

She was weak — dizzy — but Nico no longer reeked of doom and death. Now, he was revitalised, and she heard the arrow clatter to the stone floor beneath as the sapphire glow faded from her mind’s eye. Then, only darkness remained.

_“It’s a miracle…!”_

_“Sacrifice…”_

_“... Silver-Haired Maiden…”_

The words slipped lazily through her ears, becoming muddled and lost in the dense fog that now shrouded her brain. It shrouded her eyes too, and she found her lids much too heavy to open once more.

What did it matter, though? She was not needed any longer. She had saved him — saved Nico, pulling him from the abyss of death that Tellius had opened beneath him — and nothing else mattered. She felt her consciousness wane, the world spinning around her, but somehow, it was comforting.

Nico was alive. His ragged breathing and slight giggle of confused elation were the most beautiful music: a lullaby, sending her to another realm.

Strong, familiar arms grasped her, and pulled her from the floor. She was safe, Nico was safe, and Micaiah drifted from Nevassa’s marketplace into the comforting embrace of slumber.


End file.
